Netherlands Reports to the Eighteenth International Congress of Comparative Law

Sjef van Erp holds a law degree from Tilburg University (1977) and studied at the Faculté Internationale pour l’Enseignement du Droit Comparé and the The Hague Academy of International Law. After working as a research assistant and adviser at the Netherlands Royal Society of Notaries, he started working as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law of Tilburg University. As a visiting scholar, he did comparative legal research at the Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht (Germany), Wolfson College Cambridge (UK) and Berkeley (US). In 1990, he completed his doctorate thesis and continued his work at Tilburg University as an associate professor. He continued his research abroad at Cambridge (UK), Berkeley (US), Quebec (Canada), Harvard (US), Osnabrück and Hamburg (Germany). He was visiting professor at Université Laval (Quebec, Canada) and Cornell University (US), and Socrates visiting professor at Trento University (Italy). In 1997, Sjef van Erp was appointed Professor of Civil Law and European Private Law at Maastricht University. In 2009 he was elected fellow at the South African Research Chair in Property law at the University of Stellenbosch. He is Deputy Justice at the Court of Appeals of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (the Netherlands), President of the Netherlands Comparative Law Association, member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Legal Science in Paris, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Electronic “Journal of Comparative Law”, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the “European Property law Journal” and Editor-in-Chief of the Ius Commune casebook “Property Law. From September 2004 until October 2006, he was Marie Curie Fellow at the Centre of European Law and Politics at the University of Bremen (ZERP) and continues to teach comparative and European property law at the Universities of Bremen and Oldenburg as part of the Hanse Law School programme. 

Lars van Vliet studied law at Maastricht University where he graduated cum laude (highest honours). Afterwards he studied tax law for one year at the same institute. In 2000 he defended his PhD. thesis entitled 'Transfer of movables in German, French, English and Dutch law' at Maastricht University under the supervision of Prof. J.H.M. van Erp (Maastricht), and Prof. B.A. Rudden (Brasenose College, Oxford). Part of the research was done at Oxford University. He also taught comparative property law as a visiting lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Aberdeen and Strathclyde University in Glasgow. In 2009 and 2010 he taught the master course 'The Aruban law of security rights' at the University of Aruba. He regularly lectures at the Stellenbosch Law Faculty. He was appointed a fellow of the South African Research Chair in Property Law at Stellenbosch University. Lars van Vliet is the secretary and treasurer of the Netherlands Comparative Law Association. He is specialising in (comparative) property law, bankruptcy law and the law of partnerships.